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Social, Cognitive, and Linguistic Markers of Collaborative Knowledge Building Jianwei Zhang ( ) State University of New York at Albany http://tccl.rit.albany.edu

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Acknowledgements of co- authors/collaborators Mary Lamon Richard Messina Richard Reeve Marlene Scardamalia Yanqing Sun

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A Driving Question Facing a knowledge-based society, how can schools engage students into knowledge-creating practices, with support of new technologies?

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Knowledge Building Knowledge building: the creation of knowledge as a social product (Bereiter, 2002; Scardamalia & Bereiter, 2006). Knowledge and ideas have a social life out in the world (Bereiter, 2002; Brown & Duguid, 2000; Popper, 1972); Knowledge creation is a social and collective process (Csikszentmihalyi, 1999; Sawyer, 2003).

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World 3: Objective knowledge (e.g., in books) A Framing of Knowledge-Creating (Popper, 1972) World 2: The subjective/ mental world World 1: The physical world

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Augment Knowledge-Creating with Technologies Technologies as reorganizers of cognitive functioning (Pea, 1985, 1993) -- the relations/ distributions. World 3 World 2World 1 Simulations, data logging CSCL Community knowledge databases

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Challenges to Researchers Knowledge building collaborative processes and outcomes; emergent goals; depth of understanding; diverse expertise. Traditional learning Individual Pre-designed Content coverage Standard content

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This Presentation Collective responsibility, emergent knowledge building processes Literacy growth through disciplinary knowledge building Knowledge Building Measures that Matter

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Collective responsibility, emergent knowledge building processes Sustained, creative knowledge work can be better supported through distributed, flexible, adaptive, social structures than centralized, rigid, or fixed structures (Amar, 2002; Chatzkel, 2003; Engestrm 2008; Gloor, 2006; Sawyer, 2003; Williams & Yang, 1999). Collaborative improvisation (Sawyer, 2003) Emergent goals (Valsiner & Veer, 2000) Collectively setting agenda (Barab et al., 1999) Moving between groups, leading to spread and contacts of ideas (Bielaczyc & Collins, 2005)

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Collective Knowledge Work: An Example Total engineers: 4925 The Design of Boeing 787:

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An Example: The Design of Boeing 787

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Collective Cognitive Responsibility: A Key and Difficult Principle Responsibility for the success of a group effort is distributed across all the members; Tangible tasks + Staying cognitively on top of tasks and ideas as they evolve (e.g., what s happening, goals, agendas) (Scardamalia, 2002); Connecting one s own interests/expertise with those of the community (Amar, 2002).

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Collaborative Learning Design Fixed small-group collaboration (Davis, 1993): The teacher designs and divides a project; Assigns different parts to different teams; Develops a time-line; Group presentation.

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A Spectrum of Designs Specialized Groups Interacting Groups Opportunistic- Collaboration Fixed Small-Groups (Zhang et al., in press)

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A 3-Year Design Experiment Research design: A three-year design experiment (Collins, Joseph, & Bielaczyc, 2004) Participants: A teacher working with three different classes of fourth-graders (22 each year) Content domain: Light Environment: Knowledge Forum

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Three Designs Year 1: A specialized-group model Year 2: An interacting-group model Year 3: An opportunistic-collaboration model

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Classroom talk on the Grade 3 notes about how worms sense light The initial Light view Discourses in the Colours of Light view New views: Colours of Light; Shadows; Reflection (later changed to Light and Materials); Other Light The Other Light view evolved into four new views: How Light Travels All We See Is Light? Natural and Artificial Light Images in Our Eyes and in Films Knowledge building in Year 3

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Analyses of the online discourse Social Network Analysis (SNA) Two types of interactions: Note reading, note linking (build-on, rise-above, reference) Content analysis (Chi, 1997) of the teacher s notes Inquiry threads analysis (Zhang, 2004; Zhang et al., in press) Assessing knowledge gains based on individual portfolio notes C2 A C1 C5 C3C4 Emailing

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Measuring Collective Cognitive Responsibility EffortsIndicators Community awareness Note reading Collaborative contributions Note linking; clique structures Distributed engagement Centralization measures; Teacher- student exchange patterns

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Community awareness: Networks of note-reading Students note reading contacts (i.e., who read whose notes): density 0.97, 0.95 and 0.99 (p >.10).

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Clique: a sub-set of actors who are more closely tied to each other than they are to actors who are not part of the group (Hanneman, 2001, p. 77). Higher collective responsibility pervasive collaboration a larger number of overlapping cliques, instead of a few isolated sub-groups. Collaborative and Complementary Contributions: Clique Structures

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Year 1: Specialized-group Cliques (sub-communities)

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Year 1: Specialized-group Cliques (sub-communities)

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Year 1: Specialized-group Cliques (sub-communities)

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Year 1: Specialized-group Cliques (sub-communities)

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Year 1: Specialized-group Cliques (sub-communities)

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Year 1: Specialized-group Cliques (sub-communities)

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Year 1: Specialized-group Cliques (sub-communities)

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Year 2: Interacting-group

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Year 3: opportunistic-collaboration

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Specialized-group Interacting-group Opportunistic- collaboration

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Centralized vs. Distributed Framework: Freemans Graph Centralization Measures A star network: the most centralized network C2 A C1 C5 C3C4

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Questions for ideas Teacher: I need to understand: why plastic shopping bags are usually white. Is there a good reason for the colour? SS: I think shopping bags are white because that colour stands out. HM: I have not found out yet but I think plastic shopping bags are white because if they were black the food inside would be very hot. DA: The white in the shopping bag reflects the sunlight so that the food doesnt go bad. five more notes Teacher-Student Exchange Patterns Questions on ideas (I thought worms do not have eyes, so then how do they sense light? )

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Questions for ideas (X 2 = 21.78, df = 2, p